Legacy of the Red Lotus
by Nazgul1698
Summary: The Red Lotus is defeated, but its legacy lives on. How will Avatar Korra and her allies battle the warriors of chaos when the world is and always has been chaotic? Rated T for violence, language, and adult situations.
1. Chapter 1

The Legend of Korra  
Legacy of the Red Lotus

* * *

I recommend watching the full Legend of Korra and The Last Airbender series before reading this piece, but it's not entirely necessary. Allow me to warn you that this piece will contain graphic violence and disturbing/adult situation, but other than that, buckle up. This is going to be a chaotic journey, as I show you what I believe is the truth that spawned the Red Lotus, and how its legacy is evident in worlds fictional and otherwise...

* * *

At long, long last, peace. The Equalists were neutralized, Unalaq defeated, and the anarchists of the Red Lotus were all, finally, gone forever. This time, even Tenzin hadn't made more than the most perfunctory of protests when the legions of populist politicians had shouted for the death penalty, and even Tenzin hadn't flinched when the axe had swung down, forever ending the threat that organization posed.

But still, those extremists… they still made Tenzin shiver. Even now, months after their final defeat, they terrified him. Their goals were insane, impossible; even they had to know that. And what they had done had, very quickly, amounted to nothing at all. The Earth King had seized control of his kingdom, albeit with difficulty, and in the rest of the world—Republic City, and even most of the Earth Kingdom itself—life went on.

It comforted Tenzin to think that those radicals would amount to a mere footnote in the history books within only a few years. They'd be a bad memory at worst, or just another notch on Korra's belt at best. Either way, they were over and done with, and they would never come back again.

And the public knew this, no matter how hard the politicians and so-called community organizers tried to rouse them. The economy was picking up—the stocks of several multinationals sold in the Republic City market had tripled that day, and, Tenzin told himself, it had almost nothing to do with the package of legislation that he'd slipped into the lawbooks at precisely eleven pm, fifty nine minutes, and fifty nine seconds.

He raised a thimble-sized cup to his lips. It was a work of art, hand-turned and then carved with the face of Avatar Aang. The trademark on the bottom marked it as an original, and there were only five others like it in the world. Together, they had sold for enough money to pay for the upkeep of Aang Memorial Island for five years, as well as a new vacation home on Ember Island.

And the tea blend within it was a masterpiece in its own right. It was only farmed once every ten years, worth its weight in gold, and he'd sworn to himself, long ago, that he'd only partake of it when he earned it. That aroma, that rich deep mahogany color, that shimmering flawless liquid surface—

And then the door to his silent study was thrown open so hard that it dented the fine panel wall opposite. The offender was neither Peema nor Meelo, but, of all people, Korra. Livid faced and seething, she stormed toward his desk.

After a moment of internal debate, Tenzin returned his teacup to his desk. And then, ever serene, ever graceful, he stood.

"Korra," he said gently, "it's been some time since I've seen you. How are you? Have you recovered completely? What's going on—"

And then she slammed the answer to his question down on the wood surface in front of him. The impact halved the amount of tea in his cup. But Tenzin ignored that and looked at the roughspun canvas poster the Avatar was staring at. And then he understood.

"Korra, this means nothing," Tenzin said. "So someone mailed you a poster with the symbol of the Red Lotus; so what? It's the handiwork of idle rich teenagers, no doubt. Nothing more."

"The symbol of the Red Lotus, in my mailbox, today," Korra seethed, "and you're saying it's nothing?"

"It's what bored young adults do when they don't have proper supervision. Some of them riot and smash windows while chanting political slogans. Others use drugs on street corners. Still others get into street racing. That's how young people are, and these so-called heirs of the Red Lotus are no different," Tenzin said. "You've gotten letters from them before, but the White Lotus usually screens your mail. They must have gotten busy today. That's all."

"I've gotten these in the past-why wasn't I told about this?!" Korra demanded.

"Because you were injured and needed to rest, Korra," Tenzin said. "We didn't want to stress you over nothing."

"Nothing?" Korra repeated. "Nothing?" She stared at Tenzin for a moment. When he didn't respond, she reached toward his radio and cranked up the volume. Static filled the room until she dialed in to a particular station, where a frantic newscaster was yelping into a broken microphone.

"—again, this is Li Wen, coming at you live, right from central Republic City. Our building has been bombed, I repeat, our building has been bombed. The ground floors are gone and the whole thing's on fire and we have no escape—"

"Li Wen? He's from Voice of the Republic," Tenzin heard himself say. "They share a building with—"

"—ahm, ahm, I think the bomb went off in the police station, but I'm not sure. I—there's too much smoke—I can't see what's going on. One of my—my colleagues are telling me that before the explosion, they were hosting a group of interviewees from Republic University… everything was going just fine, but then they began to post up symbols of the Red Lotus, and then—and then the bomb went off. There were so many wounded and the fires—they're getting closer, oh my God—"

Tenzin strode to his window. He threw the embroidered velvet curtains open and peered at Republic City, so proud and modern and strong, and the blazing smoking glass skyscraper flanked on each side by others like it. Fire trucks crowded around it, blaring their sirens desperately, but even their longest ladders couldn't reach the screaming faces in the windows.

There was a crack, then, like the sound of thunder, but a thousand times deeper and more terrible. And then, as Tenzin and Korra watched, the building shook, then contorted, then plunged into the ground with a horrible belch of dust and flame and crushed lives.

But somehow—somehow—the reporter screamed, and screamed, and screamed and screamed, until Korra, sobbing silent tears, unplugged the radio.

But Tenzin remained silent. And so it was in silence that he stepped back to his desk and slapped his teacup and its contents clear across the room.

The Avatar, Tenzin, the leader of the White Lotus, Lin Beifong, the President of the City himself. All were walking as briskly as they could, and all around them were a full battalion of the White Lotus's finest. Patrolling the skies were metalbending police and a contingent of Republic Army airships.

Technically, since no state of war had been declared, that final detail might have been illegal. But the media wouldn't report on that, not since they were on-site with their cameras rolling and their money jangling in the pockets of half of the city's police force.

Republic University, forerunner of modern pedagogy. It normally teemed with students; the flower gardens and water fountains in the pavilion were especially popular, but now the place was a ghost town. Even the ten store glass and stone headquarters building that towered over the rest of campus was dark, silent.

With the President at her side, Korra strode up to the front door. Then she kicked it clear off its hinges. An empty dark corridor greeted her.

Tenzin pilled in behind her along with the leader of the White Lotus and several of his underlings. They hopped behind the reception desk, checked several of the nearby rooms—but there was no denying it. The whole place was empty.

"Cowards!" Korra shouted.

"Cowards!" the empty buildings shouted back at her.

"All we wanted to do was to talk, and you didn't have the guts to meet us? When it's your students who killed people? Cowards!" she screamed. But still, only her own echo answered her.

She stood still for a moment, with her fists clenched and her eyes burning. Soon, the air around her hands started to burn too. Tenzin strode toward her, and he might have had to restrain her, if he didn't appear.

He was so calm and collected that it was infectious. The smooth balanced gait of his stride, his freshly shaved face, his neat suit with not a crease out of place, and he was almost as tall as Tenzin but three decades younger.

He stood several yards in front of Korra. And then he bowed, and then he knelt and touched his forehead to the floor. There he kept it as he spoke.

"Forgive me, Avatar Korra," he said. "The board… they gave me their word that they'd receive you. And I believed them. Forgive me, Avatar Korra," he repeated. And still he remained on his hands and knees.

"Forgive you?" Korra said. Unconsciously she had moved to his side and ushered him to his feet with her hands, until he towered over her again. His chest was broad and his arms were toned, but still his waist as almost as narrow as hers.

"But what have you done?" Korra said. "And who are you?"

"Chang Beifong at your service. No relation to our honored police chief," he said, bowing his head at Lin. His breath smelled of mint and thyme and his voice was low and soft. "I'm the president of the student's union here at Republic University. The board insisted that I join them to receive you, but I would have anyway, Avatar Korra," he said. "Some of the young people who were responsible for the bombing this afternoon… I knew some of them," he said.

"Then you must know why they did this." It was Tenzin who said that. And when he stepped forward, Korra saw that that Chang had a couple of inches on him after all.

But Chang simply shook his head once. "I wish I did. But I have no idea. I saw some of them earlier today itself, and they were the same as always… happy, smiling kids. I could never have seen this coming. No one could have seen this coming."

"Then what do you think caused it?" Tenzin said. "An organized, planned attack like that… there had to be some reason for it."

"But I can't think of any, Master Tenzin," Chang said. "Most of them were well off with good grades. A few had problems with alcohol and other things, but over all, there's nothing that I know that might have pressed them to do… to do…"

His voice cracked and he simply pointed out the window at where smoke still rose from the crater gouged out from the center of the city.

"So I was right all along," Tenzin said, practically sneering. "The idle work of rich, bored teenagers. I was right all along."

"But Tenzin, that doesn't explain why they'd kill themselves," the head of the White Lotus said. "That kind of sacrifice demands some sort of motivation, no matter how insane!"

But Tenzin had no ears for him. Instead he turned to Korra, Korra and Chang.

"The time is now," he said. "Go out into the streets and make yourself shown. Both of you." He turned to Chang. "It was your peers who did this. You have to make it clear to the rest of them that this kind of behavior is not acceptable, and that you stand beside the Avatar, and against the terrorists."

Korra turned to the leader of the White Lotus, watching as the man stroked the frayed end of his beard.

"It's risky," he said. "A high visibility, high publicity act of defiance… but Tenzin's right," he said. "If we show these heirs of the Red Lotus that we're not afraid, then we can rally the public to our cause. And maybe they won't be afraid, either."

Lin nodded. So did the Republic's President. And so the Avatar took the leader of the student body by the hand and led him out into the campus, where the eyes of the city and the world were upon them.

And with her fingers still intertwined with Chang's, Korra glared right back. Citizens of every nation were watching, along with politicians, and heads of state, and maybe, somewhere, other followers of the Red Lotus.

"I have no fear of you," Korra seethed. "No fear," she repeated. "No fear."

"No fear," Chang joined in. "No fear."

The chant spread to Tenzin and Lin. Then the leader of the White Lotus and the President of the Republic. And then the White Lotus bodyguards standing around them, and then the metalbending police in the air.

And then the frightened faces in the windows of the dorms trickled outside, joining in the chant. And then there were a hundred of them, and then a thousand. One university, one city, one voice, one soul. Korra and the White Lotus guards were so caught up in the moment that they never quite noticed the canvas bag discarded on the ground. Not until it began to smoke, and then, with the full force of the pound of TNT it contained, explode.


	2. Chapter 2

The Legend of Korra  
Legacy of the Red Lotus

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Korra is dead, but the madness is only beginning. Read on!

* * *

The term "professional bending" had always been something of an oxymoron. Prefixing the name of the sport with "professional" hadn't changed its character; it was a gritty bloodsport for the middle and lower classes of Republic City. Meelo had once asked his father if he could attend a match when he was older, and Tenzin had said that yes, he could… over his dead body.

So perhaps that's where Meelo was, in one of the crowded stadiums or sports bars in the city, shouting obscenities for the honor of his favorite fighter.

But still, professional bending wasn't pure chaos. It had its refs and its rules, sure, though when the matches were on, the wine flowed freely in the stands and the blood flowed freely in the streets when supporters of one team met supporters of another.

But "bending"—just "bending"—struck a new level of depravity.

It wasn't officially sanctioned. There were no large venues for it, not yet, anyway. The matches were held in gyms, in vacant buildings, in backyards or in apartments. Entrance fees were collected in cash by scarred men with sunglasses and big bellies, and there were no fiddling occupancy limits. Viewers were simply crammed in until they were a single shouting, smoking, drinking, pissing living mass.

And when the matches started, the onlookers were often involved in the fight, willingly or not. The matches themselves only ended when no one yet moved or fought. At these points, blood and broken teeth and dismembered limbs and heads were swept up into buckets and thrown out into the gutter where they became food for the city's strays, human and canine alike.

Such was the scene in the back room of that bar. It was the sort of establishment that didn't display its name because it didn't need to. Its clientele knew that it served the cheapest booze in the city and they didn't care where it came from. They knew that fights were fought with broken glass and electrified gloves. They knew that the ladies that puttered around from one conversation to another, always smiling, always laughing, weren't there because they wanted to be. And they knew that the good Lord himself wouldn't forgive them for setting foot inside.

But the proprietor—whoever it was—wasn't a man who rested on his laurels. He was an entrepreneur. When the "dancers" failed to bring in the cash they once did, when customers mumbled slurred words about companionship instead of sex, he opened up another establishment, a cozy little quiet series of rooms across the street. Entrance fees were collected in cash by the same scarred men with sunglasses and big bellies, but when they stood guard at that door, they spoke in soft, gentle voices. As soft and gentle as their voices could be, anyway, when they were puffing on cigarettes, sometimes two at a time.

The room was padded and secure enough to keep the shrieks of glee and agony from the street from entering. There were hookahs in the lobby, hookahs and dim orange lights, and the sort of red and yellow furnishings one might have found in a Fire Nation chateau of old. And there were girls, too, with straight perfumed hair and brief skimpy clothing.

But there was no dancing in there, literal or otherwise. It wasn't allowed. There was no kissing, no fondling, no groping. All that was allowed in those quiet little rooms of false comfort and hope was cuddling.

At first, the idea seemed absurd, and those who entered that quiet soft room were mocked and laughed at. But when they exited with lighter wallets and higher spirits, they engaged in the most successful marketing campaign the city had ever known—word of mouth.

And so the clientele of the cuddle rooms grew. The girls there were trained carefully—there was to be no mockery of the words that might be whispered into their ears, no judgment, and no laughter. Privacy and discretion were the names of the game, and, after a few of their number were admonished with red hot iron skillets, they learned their lessons well.

The decor of the rooms varied. One was geared toward left wing sympathizers, and hammer and sickle insignia covered its walls. The next one over was where the right wingers come to cuddle, and the nationalist swastika, canted forty five degrees counterclockwise, was posted across from the front door. And the last room, a cramped little closet of the space, was coated from floor to ceiling with the mysterious emblem of the Red Lotus.

Ordinarily he stumbled in alone. That day he was thrown in by the same guard who had thrown him out of the bar across the street, and that was a feat. Few things could get a man thrown out of the bar downstairs, but he knew what they were, and he had done each one of them. Insulted the bartender, called a dancer by her real name, skimped on the tipping. And so he had been booted across the street, sans his wallet and a few teeth.

Unable to tell up from down, he collapsed onto a couch. He had to wait only for a moment before a dark eyed redhead slid into his arms.

For a time, she said nothing. He said nothing. He might have bent the no groping rule, just a little, but she didn't say anything. She simply tolerated his hands as they danced across her figure, until they danced onward and encircled her waist again.

And then, at long last, he was ready to talk.

"I don't know how things got like this," he mumbled. "One day I'm a kid with hopes and dreams, and now I'm… I'm this. A marked man, literally."

He paused, and he might have begun to sob if she hadn't nuzzled her face against the side of his jaw.

"That's not true," she murmured. "You could always leave this life behind. You could leave the whole city, if you wanted."

"No," he rasped. "I'm in too deep for that now; if I go, they'll find me and they'll kill me. And I couldn't get past the gates of another city. Not with this…"

He unbottoned his lapel and the first several buttons of his shirt. She drew away from him somewhat, concerned that he might be about to violate the club's rules—but it was only to show her the emblem that covered the upper right quadrant of his chest.

"The Red Lotus," she said. "So… does this mean that you're an official member?" Her fingers, velvet soft and warm, traced over the tapered edges of the symbol.

"As close as there is to such a thing, yes," he said. "There's no one Red Lotus group anymore… it's a movement. And I… I seem to be higher in the movement than most, so… so they made me do this."

He took hold of her fingers. And then he pressed them against the inner circle of his mark, over the upraised ridges in his skin.

"It almost made sense at the time. Almost," he said. "But all that alcohol and all those drugs couldn't take the pain away, not when they pressed that red hot blade against me. Then, in that moment… that was when I realized that there was no turning back. I'm Red Lotus for life, now… any security guard or cop who happens to pat me down or do an invasive search will know that straight away. So I can't leave the city."

He paused. Pressed his face into her hair and drew in a breath of sweetness.

"Now that I think of it, I bet that's why they did it," he said. "Now they know I'm committed, because I have no alternatives."

She wrapped an arm around his midsection and held him close.

"But it can't be all bad," she said. "Now that you know what your place in life is… there has to be a sense of certainty in that."

"Oh, absolutely," he said. "I know who I am and what I have to do. And most of the time, I love it. The rest of the time…" he shrugged. "That's why I'm here."

She laughed at that, a pleasant soft sound like little bells chiming. A finger circled across his clothed abdomen, just a few inches above the waistband of his pants.

"So… why did you join in the first place?" she said. "Of all the things to give your life to… why the Red Lotus?"

"It just turned out like that," he admitted. "All of my friends were jumping on the bandwagon, and all of their friends, and when I attended my first meeting, that bond, that sense of purpose, it reached something in me."

"Would you have joined without that feeling of camaraderie?"

"No," he scoffed. "Without the camaraderie and—I admit it—groupthink, what is the Red Lotus but a bunch of angry teenagers with nothing better to do than set off bombs?"

"But why?" she said. "The city is full of possibilities—why blow it all up?"

"Why not?" he countered. And to that she had no response. Not for a time, anyway.

"You know," she said, "you're not the only one who needs a purpose in life. If I wanted to join the Red Lotus… how would I?"

"It's not a formal process," he said. "You just have to get to know people who are Red Lotus, show your face at a few meetings, and slowly, become part of the organization. As you show your competencies, you can take on more responsibilities. That's how it's done."

She moved suddenly, resting her chest against his and looking down at him. Her soft straight hair seemed to form a veil that blocked out the rest of the world.

"Take me with you," she said. "The next time you go to a Red Lotus meeting… take me with you. I'd do anything to go. I'd do anything to join. Please…" she simpered.

He smiled at her.

"There's a meeting a few hours from now I'd be happy to take you to," he said. "But first, you have to pay the entry fee."

She tilted her head, questioning what he meant, until she felt his hand move from her hip to the waistband of her skirt.

Her fee was paid. That was all he'd said after all they'd done. And then he kissed her, went to the bathroom to vomit and dress, and left the club with her on his arm.

It had happened before, employees leaving with they who had shared their hearts with them. They never came back, either, and not even the most hopeful of their coworkers could pretend that they had become stay-at-home girlfriends or wives. That was why no one bothered to fare her well as she left. They knew how she would fare, and it wasn't well.

But her shift was over, so no one stopped her. Not any of the girls she passed, nor the other customers she'd serviced, nor the lanky guard who glared at her, nor anyone else who crossed her path.

She brushed aside their lack of faith by nuzzling against his shoulder. She didn't even know his name—she said as much—but he smiled and said that information was only given to those who needed to know it.

Stroking through her hair, he led her down a quiet abandoned alleyway. The homeless knew better than to wander down there; if they so much as passed through, the residents would kick and curse them until they left. And if they tried to spend the night there, they'd wake up the next morning missing their possessions and their limbs.

A silhouette in the window of a house at the far end of the alley seemed to watch them approach. When they got closer, the dancer noted the symbol of the Red Lotus, cut into the door around the peephole.

The man on her arm—no, the boy—strode right up the door. Knocked on it twice.

"No visitors," came the barked answer, before he could even announce himself.

But he laughed and shook his head.

"She's not a visitor," he said. Then, with a brief violent wrench of his arm, he yanked off her wig and exposed her for who she truly was.

Cuts marred her face. The arm she'd lifted to shield herself from the blast was worse, robbed of most of its flesh by concussion and flame. But she was alive and alert and now she was angry. She parried the knife her recruiter thrust at her and moved to take him out, but the lanky bodyguard who had been following her all along beat her to it, and dropped him with a jolt of electricity to the forehead.

Chang Beifong then pulled down his mask, baring his own battered face, and nodded to Korra. And so it was she who stormed up to the front door of the house and kicked it down—and then leaped back, just in time to evade the twin roaring motorcycles that nearly ran her down. She lashed out with a column of earth, but the bikers dodged it and escaped, laughing, down another alley. Only the echoed roar of their bikes and black sooty exhaust remained behind.

Korra shrieked a curse. Then she threw up her hands and jumped to avoid another bike—but it was Chang. Chang Beifong on a red-and-white chopper of his own. There was space on the tattered leather seat behind him, and when Korra saw that, he didn't need to say another word. She was on, and he was gunning the engine before the roar of the two other bikers had even fully vanished.

The turn down which they had disappeared was sharp, but Chang didn't slow down. Instead, he caught air off of a jumble of corrugated tin and drove, sideways, across the apartment on the far side of the corner, before his tires met the street again.

And then the chase was on. Past winking streetlights, through buildings that leaned over them like tired old men, over groaning cobblestone bridges that arched across rivers choked with human shit.

The Red Lotus members were on a major road, it seemed, a highway clogged with ox carts, cars, and runners on foot. The latter made things difficult, especially when the fleeing bikers saw that they were being pursued and clotheslined them. All to create chaos, all to buy them time. And it worked. Korra saw one scrawny man fall in one direction, and his arm in the other, and she knew that this couldn't last.

"Get off the road," she called to Chang, clinging to his midsection. "If they see us following them, people are going to die. We've got to intercept them when they're not ready for it—"

"Way ahead of you," Chang said.

The gleaming red lights of the enemies' bikes screamed into the distance when Chang took the next exit. But he caught air again, this time off of a broken down rickshaw, and struck another building, this time with his bike oriented up and down. Vertical. Twenty feet off the ground.

He gunned the engine. Pushed against the wall with his foot. And, somehow, the bike managed to climb up the wall, up and over it, until it was on the roof.

Off-white laundry blocked his path. Korra cut it down with a blast of fire and then the bike carried them on, from one roof to the next, in a shortcut through the city. Every impact on the next surface knocked the air from their lungs, but in the distance, the red lights that marked the enemy bikes were slowing, stopping, thinking that they'd lost their trailers—there they were, in fact, ducking into another alleyway not a kilometer off.

Another impact made Korra bite into her tongue. Bite through her tongue. Chang tried to say something, to apologize perhaps, and that was when their bike broke through the roof of the building they were on.

They crashed through a kitchen, upending a pot of soup, the starving family's only meal for that week. Chang gunned the engine, though, and sent them through the window in an explosion of glass and screams. There was a moment of silence, almost of tranquility, as Korra looked at the city and the city looked back at her—

And then they were back on the road. Bruised, burned, dazed, one wrong turn away from a fatal accident. But somehow Chang managed to keep them upright, right up until they entered the alley. Then, at last, he passed out, falling from the bike and rolling, rolling, until he came to rest at the doorstep of yet another strip club.

The alley was blocked by a mound of refuse, though. The Red Lotus members had no escape. They'd dismounted their bikes and now, unarmed, they faced the Avatar.

If it hadn't been for the child, the pathetic gutter rat who had raised her head from the trash, Korra would have taken them then and there. But they had her before she could stop them. They lifted the child a clear foot off the ground by her neck, holding her in an all-too-tight headlock.

They said nothing. They didn't need to. When Korra saw that little girl's face turn purple, she held out her empty hands.

"Hey—let's all just calm down. Just leave the girl alone, and I promise, you won't be harmed," Korra pleaded.

"Even if I believed you, Avatar, we would be harmed if we allowed you to arrest us," one of the masked men said. "Beaten by the cops and jailguards and raped by other inmates… no, you won't be taking us tonight."

"Then just go," Korra said. She stood aside so that the street was open to them. "Just go, and leave the girl alone. Just _leave her alone_!" she suddenly screamed.

And the members of the Red Lotus saw that escape. Saw that free passage. And then the one holding the girl took hold of her head in one hand and her body in the other, and, too quickly for Korra to do anything about it, separated them.

* * *

Chang rose, a long, long time later, to the sound of Korra crying and caressing the body of the child. The Red Lotus members were nowhere the be seen, but the fires that still burned in that alley stank of boiling fat and burning hair.

In silence he crawled to the Avatar. Touched her on the shoulder. Then wrapped his arms around her and allowed his own tears to fall. The police sirens were approaching, but what good could they do now? What the Hell good could they do?


	3. Chapter 3

The Legend of Korra  
Legacy of the Red Lotus

* * *

No comments. Keep reading.

* * *

Republic City. The shining capital of the only multicultural state in the world, renowned by everyone everywhere for its wealth and prosperity. Foreign peasants said that the streets were paved with gold; foreign nobels knew better than that and said that only some streets were paved with gold.

Stupid deluded fools, the lot of them. Korra had known that from the moment she'd first set foot into the city, and seen a gaggle of street urchins do battle with each other over a kernel of corn shat from a passing horse's ass. That poverty, that madness, that was the only Republic City most of its residents would ever know.

There was a middle class, though. An increasingly pressured sector of society that had clawed its way above the unwashed masses, whether through crime or sheer luck. These comprised some ten percent of Republic City's populace, though their numbers dwindled by the day.

And then there were the wealthy of the city. The bureaucrats, the well-born, the uncommonly successful criminals. They were the select few in the city who could ever touch gold, let alone adorn their houses and possessions with it.

Chang was well-born. Of that there could be no doubt; what else would explain the intricacy of the wood carvings mounted here and there in his room? And the fine stitching and silver buttons each of his shirts sported?

No, he was well-born. The only question was what moral barriers his parents had crossed to give him such a good life. Korra pondered the question for a moment, before she decided that she'd rather not know.

She drew the blankets up around her and ran a hand up and down Chang's midsection, feeling at his lean musculature. This made him fidget a bit and, still sleeping, crack a brief smile. Was he dreaming, Korra wondered. Or was it she who was dreaming?

Perhaps she was. No, she certainly was, definitively, without a doubt. It had to be a dream. The flames blossoming here and there in the room, the insignia of the Red Lotus literally blazing overhead, it had to be a dream. It had to be a dream.

And then the bomb went off, throwing Korra out of the window and into the frigid black night.

She couldn't see anything. Couldn't hear anything. Couldn't smell or taste anything but her own blood. She was alive, but whereas the first bomb she'd survived had scarred and burned her, this bomb had crippled her. She lifted herself to a sitting position with an arm stripped of most of its flesh. In time, she could see again—only with one eye—but that was enough. That was enough for her to see them closing in around her.

Dozens of them. Hundreds even. Too many for the quiet streets of the gated neighborhood to easily admit. Some of them were running amok in other houses already, pillaging and plundering and raping and putting those who resisted them to the sword. But their swords were only figurative, they had no real weapons. They only had what they could scrabbled together or improvise.

Crowbars, bricks taken from the roadside, steak knives, steel rebar or metal poles. These were the swords clenched in the fists of those who followed the Red Lotus.

And they were getting closer. And closer. And closer.

In a move that then-Prince Zuko had made famous over a hundred years ago, Korra performed a rising windmill and got to her feet, sending her enemies reeling back in a wash of burning pain.

Gasping breaths choked with blood and worse, Korra snarled at them. "Stay back," she said, using her bad arm to clutch her worse arm. "I don't want to fight you, but if you make me, I swear on the Black God that I'll kill every last one of you."

As one they stopped. In silence they stared at the Avatar, still clenching their weapons, still wearing their ski masks and their Red Lotus tee shirts. Even injured and without a friend in the world, she was dangerous. In fact, perhaps now she was at her most dangerous state. Perhaps they were all one step away from awakening her Avatar state, and see her destroy half the neighborhood as she wiped them out.

Korra almost smirked. Almost. Then, somewhere in the crowd, she saw the ball-peen rise—and then fall on a masked head. That was all it took for the fighting to start. That was all it took for the Red Lotus followers to begin to clobber not the Avatar, but one another, with such ferocious violence that Korra was numbed.

Skulls were smashed. Teeth knocked out. Arms wrenched from shoulder sockets, throats slashed, eyes gouged into permanent blindness. There was no reason, no sense, no logic—just chaos.

Zaheer—wherever he was—was laughing. No, he wasn't laughing, it was worse than that. He was observing the situation from his abode in the Spirit World, and he was smiling.

And then Korra saw one Red Lotus member rip out the tongue of another, hold it in his hand, and, as it still squirmed, eat it whole. She rushed forward—personal safety be damned, she had to stop this, stop the madness—

And then she saw how tall that Red Lotus cannibal was. How tall and lean and good looking he was. He made eye contact with her, and in that moment, he saw that she knew who he was, no matter his mask.

He killed his opponent with a knife through the eye socket and then, as chaos still reigned around them, he approached Korra. He stopped when she shrieked a curse and threatened to roast him alive if he took another step—then he dropped his weapon and moved closer to her. And he didn't stop moving until she was in his arms again, as she had been earlier that night.

He favored her with a kiss that tasted like blood, hers or his or the man he'd mutilated she didn't know. He embraced her again, and she could have lost herself in his arms again, as she had not all that long ago.

"But why?" Korra heard herself say. "You're… the President of the student council, you've got perfect grades, you're rich, you're… you're… you've got everything going for you. Why… why do this?" Tears were in her eyes, she knew, as she looked around at the teeming brawling masses.

But Chang just smiled. It was the strangest smile Korra had ever seen. Full of knowledge and understanding, but devoid of anything else—everything else.

"I'm young," Chang said. "That's… it, in a nutshell. I'm against everything. Everything, even myself—I don't like what I'm doing, in fact, it disgusts me. So I hate myself. Almost as much as I love myself." He sighed. "That's what being young is about. Being against everything, but not knowing how to act on that feeling, not even knowing if it's legitimate.

"I envy you, Avatar Korra," he said. That was how he addressed her; that was how he'd always addressed her from the very beginning, even when they had become one earlier that evening.

"I envy you. You had guides, leaders, moral examples, who taught you right from wrong, who lead you through your youth. But us," he used an arm to indicate to himself and all of the others, "who do we have? Religious zealots? Politicians? Scientists who can fix machines but not people? Manufactured pop culture idols?"

He laughed an empty laugh.

"So what do we have left, other than to be senselessly violent?" he asked. "At this very moment, two percent of our city approves of our parliament, but ninety-eight percent of them will somehow stay in office for another term. Our fathers are all drunk or worse at their favorite bars, and our mothers are welcoming into their beds their newest lovers. My own little brother isn't even my full brother," he said. "And when I was growing up, no one, and I mean no one, ever bothered to explain to me what the purpose of everything, or _anything_ , is. No one even tried, other than that so-called man of God who raped me before I even understood what it meant to be raped."

He laughed again. This time there wasn't even emptiness in his voice. And by then, the brawl was nearly over. The victors were mopping up the surviving losers, and when they found no more, they turned their weapons on themselves.

"And why not?" Chang said, as he watched a laughing, sobbing toothless man open his throat from ear to ear. "Tell me, Avatar Korra, why on Earth not? No, don't bother," he said, holding up his hand. "It's too late. There's no reason for us here. There's no reason in anything, anywhere. All that's left for us in this whore of a world is—you know it as well as I do—chaos. The legacy of the Red Lotus."

He smiled. Kissed her one last time. Then, letting her hand slowly slip from his, he stepped backward, and returned to his world, the only world he'd ever known, the only world that had ever actually existed: a world defined by chaos.

* * *

Readers, that is all I have for you. There is no happy ending, no real tying together of loose ends, and even I don't know what's going to happen to Korra and Chang in the moments that follow these events. All I can promise is that their actions reflect their world, which reflects the truth that the heroes of the Red Lotus tried to expose to the world.

Order is a lie. Structure is a lie. All that is real is change and change is by nature chaotic.

As for how we humans can cope with this truth, I will be honest, I don't think we can. So fuck hope, and embrace chaos.


End file.
